“Hey, Chief, I saw one of those signs in the drugstore window earlier,” a voice said.
Jack clenched his teeth, wishing he hadn’t lost his temper in front of Harry Lawton, who managed the biggest bank in town. Lawton had probably been heading toward the Blue Duck Diner for the early bird dinner special. A widower, the man was a regular at the place, which specialized in the best country-fried steak in the county.
“Hey there, Mr. Lawton.”
“Have you been investigating?”
“Enough to know the girl’s eighteen and has a piece of garbage mother and a lot of reasons to leave home.”
Before Lawton could reply, another loud voice intruded. “Good afternoon, gentlemen!”
Damn. Mayor Bobby Cunningham, who had just parked his Lincoln Continental two spaces down, was getting out of his car to join the game of let’s-bother-the-chief-on-a-Friday-afternoon. What a hell of a way to start the weekend.
“What’s this I hear about another girl goin’ missin’?” Cunningham asked as he walked around the car and joined Jack and Lawton on the sidewalk.
Forcing away his instinctive reaction, which was to curse over the insult of coming out of the damned police station and finding that on his own squad car, he managed to shrug instead. “You know kids, Mayor. Just another Boro tramp taking her act on the road.”
Harry Lawton, who, Jack quickly recalled, sang the loudest every Sunday in the church choir, frowned at the description, the expression on his chubby face reproachful.
Always quick to smooth things over with the local businessmen, Jack added, “What I mean to say is, she probably got herself in trouble and left town to go have an abortion or something. These kids nowadays, it’s just shameful.”
The picture of a concerned, devout citizen, Lawton shook his head. “Poor child.” He stepped closer, looking nothing less than serene and pious, as if he was about to spout platitudes about loving thy neighbor. So the next quiet words to come out of his mouth definitely caught Jack by surprise. “Make sure that cunt from the newspaper doesn’t make a big thing out of this.”
Jack froze, stunned into silence for a second. “Uhh . . .”
The mayor jumped in, his heavy accent growing even thicker with his irritation. “This town’s finally settling down after that mess she caused last month. We don’t wanna draw any outside attention he’ah.” He patted Jack on the shoulder. “Gotta protect our way of life. Don’t you agree, gentlemen?”
“Yes, indeed we do,” said the banker. “Things are just about perfect in Granville and we want nothing changing about our little piece of Georgia heaven.”
“Little piece of heaven,” Jack repeated, trying to figure this out. Were Cunningham and Lawton merely concerned citizens, or more than that? Jack wasn’t stupid. He’d heard rumors about the secret goings-on of some of the more prominent townsmen. And he suddenly had to wonder if these two had been nominated to speak for that shadowy group. Honestly, he had no way of knowing. Nor did he want to. Some things weren’t worth finding out, and in the dark wasn’t such a bad place to be. Especially when the light shone garishly on things he’d rather not think about. As long as he kept opening the small beer fridge on his back porch and finding a small stack of twenties every weekend, he was more’n happy to not know any damn thing the rich folks in this town wanted to keep secret. They were welcome to keep their skeletons in their closets.
He shifted uncomfortably, not liking the direction his thoughts suddenly went. To skeletons. Some strange things had been going on lately. It was getting harder to keep his eyes focused straight ahead and not glance at the strange occurrences taking place on the sidelines.
The money provided a nice blinder when it came to secret affairs and a little creative accounting. But murder? That was a whole different ball game. One he really didn’t want to think about playing.
“So y’all are gonna stay on top of this he’ah situation?” Cunningham asked.
“You bet. No worries about that reporter,” he said. “I already put a muzzle on her.” He waved the crumpled flyer. “I’ll have another talk with the girl’s trashy mother, too. I bet she’s the one stirring up this trouble. Woman’s got a record as long as my arm.”
“Not surprising,” Lawton said. “Trashy parents, trashy child. It’s the way of the world, isn’t it?” Not pausing, he turned to offer a gentlemanly little bow at two women who walked out of the nearby diner. “Evening, ladies.”
After they’d nodded their hellos and passed by, Cunningham smiled at Jack, wearing his politician’s face. “You gonna make it to the game tonight, Chief? Watch our North Granville boys whup on those Hoover hoodlums? I hear they’re dedicating the game to Coach White.”
“You bet your sweet ass I am,” he replied, thinking about the former Granville coach, who’d died in a car crash a few years ago.
Harry Lawton frowned and
tsk
ed, looking at the choir-singing banker again. “Cursin’s a crutch, son.” As if he hadn’t just called a local woman a cunt. It was like a switch went on and off in the man, light to dark and back again. Mayor Cunningham had the same ability.
They weren’t alone in having that ability. Jack had seen it in a few other high rollers in this town. They seemed to have hiding what they were really thinking down to an art form. It was a skill that came in handy for them, or so he suspected, since few people around Granville had any idea at all what really went on behind closed doors of their respected neighbors’ houses.
And as long as they never found out, and that fridge kept getting visits from the money fairy, that was okay with Jack Dunston. Because a neighborly outlook, family values, and an old- fashioned lifestyle were all well and good. But if the day ever came when he decided to stop bowing down to men he didn’t particularly like, and lost his job, nothing beat a whole lot of cash.
Friday, 6:30 p.m.
Walter Kirby and his family lived in a pretty, woodsy subdivision just north of town, filled with huge lawns and dozens of modern-looking houses. The place had sprung up prerecession, when people were looking to upgrade to McMansions. It had yet to recover from the downturn, which had seen a third of the homes in the neighborhood go to foreclosure. A few of the yards were overgrown, old, swollen newspapers rotting on the curb like big dead rats.
There weren’t quite as many For Sale signs as a year ago, though. Apparently a few upwardly mobile locals and newcomers to town were taking advantage of the bargains. Still, it didn’t look great.
Lexie wondered if Walter had thought about getting out. With Ann-Marie’s cancer treatments going on for well over a year, he had to have considered looking for a job elsewhere, where he wouldn’t have to commute an hour to get to and from the best hospitals.
But when she turned her car onto his block and saw the teenagers hanging out in his driveway, she knew he wouldn’t have done it. He’d never have made the girls change schools, not with the twins being in their senior year. He’d just done his good-dad-good-husband thing and made that drive, trying to keep everyone happy and the balls of his family life up in the air.
“Hey, Lexie!” one of the kids called when she pulled up in front of the house, parking at the curb. There were already four cars in the driveway. She expected a couple of those, Taylor’s VW Beetle and Jenny’s PT Cruiser, to be pulling out soon. It was almost game time.
“Hey, girls,” she said, nodding to Walt’s younger daughters as she exited the car. The other two were probably inside donning their makeup, uniforms, and their school spirit. Rah-rah.
Cheerleaders had never been among her favorite people, not even when she’d been in high school herself. But somehow the Kirby twins managed to be okay despite their perkiness. Probably had something to do with the good parents who were raising them.
“Seen any serial killers lately?” asked one of the smirking boys from the neighborhood.
“Only the one hiding under your bed, waiting for you to go to sleep tonight,” Lexie immediately replied, used to the snark. Hell, at least the kids would say such things to her face.
“Dad said for you to go on around back. He’s firing up the grill,” said Christy, Walter’s youngest child, who was still snorting over the way her male friend’s face had gone a little pale.
Lexie smiled at all the teens as she worked her way through them, holding a brown bag containing a six-pack in one arm, and a bunch of flowers in the other. She emerged into the backyard just in time to hear Walter muttering something about his propane. “What’s that, boss?”
He glared down at the grill. “Might as well be in the kitchen. Damned gas grill doesn’t taste much different than the stove. But they say it’s healthier than charcoal.”
“Ugh. Grunt. Caveman must cook meat over flame,” she teased, handing him a beer.
He twisted off the cap and took a long pull. “So,” he asked when he was finished, “how did you spend your day today, other than pretending to be sick?”
She tilted her head in confusion.
“Stan. He came in to tell me he felt sure you weren’t ill and I should talk to you about the importance of not calling off work on a Friday just because you don’t feel like coming in.”
“Frigging tattletale. Did you tell him I hadn’t called in sick?”
“Actually, no. More fun to let him stew about my lack of interest.”
“Evil man. I like it.”
“Any luck today?” he asked.
Shoving her unpleasant coworker out of her mind, she admitted, “I saw our local psychic again. He had more questions and promised to read everything I left for him.”
“I still can’t believe he even talked to you.”
“Yep. He wasn’t happy about it at first, but he eventually even let me in his house.” She grinned. “Not a shrunken head, voodoo doll, or crystal ball anywhere in sight.”
“You haven’t really told me what you think of him.”
She considered the question, going over the time she had spent at McConnell’s house again. “I think he’s very interesting,” she mused, knowing that was putting it way too mildly. But she didn’t necessarily want her boss to know her thoughts about their local psychic were as much personal as professional. “He’s also incredibly smart.”
“His record proves that. You look at some of the cases he’s worked, and you can see a lot of what he comes up with is pretty remarkable.”
“That’s why you wanted me to go talk to him,” she said, understanding why her boss had put that note in her hands. “It had nothing to do with the weird stuff.”
“He’s an experienced investigator and brilliant to boot. Hell, I don’t care if he claims he can put on thick glasses and channel Buddy Holly’s ghost, we could use his help.”
She agreed. After meeting him, she had gone back and studied all those reports about the cases he’d helped solve. How sad that it appeared one hugely unsuccessful one had completely overshadowed all the ones on which his aid had proved instrumental. “One thing—he is adamant that his involvement remain completely off the record, during and after this investigation.”
He waved an unconcerned hand. “Done.” Casting a quick look toward the house, he added, “Ann- Marie will be out in a few minutes.”
She knew what he meant and didn’t waste any time. “Tell me why you brought me here.”
Sitting down on a cushioned outdoor chair, he gestured toward an empty one opposite it. “I heard a rumor that some human remains turned up out on Old Terrytown Road.”
She shook her head, hard, sure she’d heard him wrong. “What?”
“You heard me. Human remains.”
Stunned, she whispered, “How have I not heard about this? Why aren’t we covering it?”
Walter simply stared, waiting for her to figure it out.
“They’re not reporting it? A body?” She leapt to her feet. “This is unbelievable.”
“Not a body. Some bone fragments.” He glanced toward the still-closed sliding-glass door, and gestured her back to her seat. “An old friend of mine, wishing to remain anonymous, said he was out walking his dog and found some strange-looking bones. Called the chief, who said he felt sure they were—are you ready for this?—from a bear.”
Lexie dropped back into the chair. “Oh, now he’s a freaking mammalogist?”
“My friend said he got a really good look at what he was sure was a human jawbone. Said if he was wrong about that, he would give away his entire collection of
CSI
DVDs.”
She closed her eyes, the idea of a human jawbone being discovered by the side of a local road a little sickening. Especially if that bone belonged to one of the missing teens.
She’d speculated about it, written about it, and she’d firmly believed she was onto something, but hearing about actual remains made everything that much more real, more tragic. Theorizing on paper that a serial killer was murdering young women right here in Granville was one thing. But she’d been so caught up in the investigation, in the story, she hadn’t really let herself think of things like shallow graves and bodies.
Finally, once she felt sure she could speak calmly again, she asked, “So what happened?”
“Dunston took the remains,” Walter said. “He didn’t bother setting up any kind of crime scene, showed no care in collecting evidence. He threw the fragments in a plastic grocery-store bag and said he’d have the coroner take a look to ‘confirm’ his theory that they were from an old dead bear.”
Muttering an obscenity, she wondered if she’d be able to eat dinner at all. She had lost her appetite. “It’s like living in a comedy where the bumbling cops couldn’t find a wall if they ran into it.”
Walter’s bushy brow pulled down over narrowed eyes. Again, though, he didn’t tell her what was on his mind, he let her figure it out for herself.
It didn’t take long. “You’re thinking it’s more than stupidity,” she whispered.
“I made a few calls today, including one to the coroner’s office, asking if they’d been asked to examine the bones.” Walter paused long enough to sip his beer—or to get control of his own anger. “They had no idea what I was talking about. Hadn’t heard a word about it.”
She let out a long, slow exhalation, her heart thudding so hard she almost felt her rib cage shake. “My God, what if he’s not being careless? Are we talking about a deliberate cover-up?”